PLAIN TALK.

Hastings Standard, Issue 234, 30 January 1897, Page 2

PLAIN TALK.

Given a good bald head, a sultry Sunday, and a dry-as-dust sermon, and the odds are that the enterprising house-fly will take charge of the bald pate, and prevent its owner indulging in forty winks, or even in ten winks. There are no flies on E. M. Smith, of Taranaki ironsaml notoriety. In the first place the loquacious E. Metcalf Smith is not bald, and in the second place he is too active to suit the nature of a house-fly. He is a plain-spoken, energetic, industrious citizen, and a good colonist, but Mr E. M. Smith makes a huge mistake. He fancies he is a politician and of such high quality that it is impossible for this unfortunate colony to progress without his guidance and his counsel. Mr Smith was shot out of the elective chamber at the general election, but his egotism and his inordinate desire to be in politics is in no way curbed by the misadventure. If his ungrateful constituents have euchred him of £240 a year, there is still a chance of obtaining the modest £l5O a year with a seven years' right to the mystic letters M.L.C. Mr Smith is a plain spoken man, and at the banquet given to Mr Walter fymes, the newly elected member for Egmont, in replying to the toast of li The Government," Mr Smith said he hoped that he would be placed in the Upper House, so that he would be able to assist Mr Symes and the electors. Mr Smith evidently abandoned himself to himself, on the Yankee principle, " Fill yourself full of your subject, as though you were a barrel, take out the bung, and let human nature caper." If the Legislative Council is the haven of refuge for political dunderheads and dead beats, then Mr Smith will surely get there, but the effrontery of the man is none the less amusing.